"By the 1880s, approximately 13,000 roustabouts, cotton screwmen, longshoremen,
teamsters and
loaders, and cotton yardmen labored for dozens if not hundreds of steamship agents, contracting
stevedores, railroad
managers, boss draymen, cotton yard proprietors, and the other middlemen who produced or
repaired the barrels,
weighed the goods, and transported the various products between different processing points in
the city."

Roustabouts on the New Orleans levee, ca. 1890. In accordance
with the strict delineation of tasks along the riverfront, the roustabouts worked on board the
steamboats; longshoremen worked on the wharves themselves. On the boats, the roustabouts
stoked the boilers and handled the cargo. The riverfront laborers, many of whom were
ex-slaves, were paid well, for the times, but the work was back breaking, the hours were long,
and the treatment was often harsh. The roustabouts had no lodgings on the boats, but slept
where they could, often on the cotton bales. For meals, they ate what was left over after the
passengers had dined.

[George Francis Muggier Collection]

The river has created millionaires and bankrupts, and it has provided a livelihood for an untold
number of people
working in untold numbers of jobs. The influence of the river on the labor force has always
extended well beyond the
docks into all corners of the city. The 1900 New Orleans City Directory lists a dizzying array of
professions and
workers associated directly or indirectly with the river--bankers; insurance agents; cotton
brokers; freight brokers;
grain brokers; rice brokers, and sugar brokers; commission merchants; cooperage companies;
owners, managers and
laborers at cotton presses and dry docks; fruit importers; grain exporters; boat builders; oyster
wholesalers; sail
makers; towboat captains and crewmen; carters; wagon manufacturers; watchmen; the men of
the Dock Board itself
and the members of the city's exchanges; the ferry boat operators and crewmen; the railroad
companies and all their
attendant employees; the lessees of wharves and landings--and the list could go on. Today, the
economic impact of the
river is even more encompassing. Directly, the port generates some 50,000 jobs in the New
Orleans metro area. The
Dock Board's Annual Directory, listing services or companies connected in some way
with the Port of New
Orleans, is more than 150 pages long. The Port also provides more than $250 million in state
and local tax revenue,
indirectly affecting the quality of life of all the citizens of New Orleans--and beyond.

An example of the kind of river-based company that influenced the New Orleans economy and
provided jobs for
residents was the Cromwell Steamship Line, with offices in the 1880s at 41 Carondelet Street.
This company owned
four first-class steamships running from New Orleans to New York. Pen Illustrations of New
Orleans,
1881-1882, a"historical and descriptive review" of New Orleans trade, commerce and
manufacturers, speaks of
the company in these glowing terms:

The impetus given to the industries of this community by the capital and enterprise of this
company,
is not unrecognized, and the general consideration with which it is regarded is the natural
outgrowth
of a career which, for a number of years, has embodied the highest principles of
commercial
integrity and personal honor. No more effective messengers of peace, civilization and
commerce,
can our nation avail itself of than American steamers, enabling that interchange of
products and
inhabitants that shall bind the lands together in the bonds of a common brotherhood. [p.
67]

The description is a bit excessive, perhaps, (and the volume is full of such paeans to commerce)
but it illustrates the
enthusiasm with which the New Orleans business community viewed the climate of the times.
The boom did not last,
but for the time being, New Orleans looked toward the future with optimism and confidence.